by Kara Lennox
“And Tubby’s is a happy place?”
She looked around, perhaps assessing it through her adult eyes. The restaurant was half-filled, mostly with men in work clothes and a couple of tables of boisterous teenagers.
“Yes, it’s happy,” she declared. “These men are so relieved to sit in the air-conditioning for a few minutes’ break from their construction jobs. And those kids—blowing their allowance money on burgers and ice cream, flirting, away from parental control—yeah, happy.”
But her smile was slightly bittersweet.
“You ready?” the waitress asked.
“Yes, I’ll have the chicken finger basket and a Diet Coke.”
Billy ordered a standard burger and fries and the waitress left.
“No banana split?”
“It probably wouldn’t be as good as I remember. Now. About Mary-Francis.”
“I think she’s a lying schemer. Please, can’t we write this one off? No way could her husband be alive.”
“Ah, sorry. She was telling the truth—about some things, anyway. The coins exist. She believes they’re worth a million dollars, and her daughter did visit. She believes Eduardo has been in contact with Angie. All that’s true. She was lying about one thing, though.”
“What?”
“She didn’t merely ‘forget’ to tell Eduardo about giving the coins to her sister. I think she deliberately kept the information from him. Their marriage was on the skids. But she couldn’t just divorce him—he was violent. She might have wanted to keep those coins for herself, so she could escape and make her own fresh start.”
“Forgive me for pointing this out, but a million-dollar coin collection is a nice motive for murder.”
“She believes he’s alive,” Claudia said flatly.
“Then she’s delusional. The blood evidence was clear-cut. Maybe she had some sort of psychotic break and she forgot she murdered him.”
“Give me some credit. I think I would notice if the subject was psychotic.”
Their food arrived, and for a time they didn’t speak, focusing on filling their empty stomachs. Once Billy had taken a few bites to dull the edge of his hunger, he sat back and observed Claudia as she devoured her chicken fingers, coating each one with a few dribbles of ranch dressing. She took small bites, closing her eyes to savor each one.
He again wondered why this place was special to her. He tried once more to picture her as a little girl. Long blond hair in pigtails, maybe. She had such a slight build now, she’d probably been thin as a child, all knees and elbows. Had she been a tomboy, or a Little Miss Priss? Probably the latter.
“You’re smiling again.”
Billy quickly schooled his features. Damn, that was careless of him, letting his musings show on his face. His life no longer depended on hiding his true self every waking minute. But he still preferred to keep his feelings out of public view, and the one person he ought to be more careful around was Claudia Ellison. He might not believe in her body-language junk science, but she was perceptive.
They finished and paid with a company Visa, then headed back into the sizzling hot afternoon. Claudia removed her pale blue suit jacket. Her blouse was damp, clinging to her breasts in a way that made Billy’s mouth go dry despite the huge soft drink he’d just sucked down.
“So you’re going to recommend Project Justice not take on this case?” Claudia asked.
“It’s kind of fantastical.”
“Yes…but don’t you think we should at least check a few things out? For example, let’s sic Mitch on Eduardo. If the guy is alive, he’s leaving signs of his presence somewhere in cyberspace. Mitch is so amazing when it comes to that, and we have that list of friends and associates Mary-Francis gave us.”
“I guess that would be okay, if Mitch doesn’t mind.” Mitch Delacroix was Project Justice’s resident computer geek and missing person locator. “I can put Daniel off about a decision for a few days.”
“And I want to visit Theresa and see what she has to say about this illustrious coin collection.”
“Yeah, I’ll admit I’m curious. If Theresa has some supervaluable artifacts in her home, we should advise her to take them to the bank and put ’em in a vault. Especially if her drug-addict niece wants them.”
As Claudia climbed into the passenger seat of Billy’s truck, she offered him a healthy flash of thigh, and his heart leaped into his throat…was that her panties he just saw? Then he realized she was wearing a lacy-edged slip.
How Victorian. How…intriguing.
“She was definitely concealing something,” Claudia said once they were back on the road. “She gave at least a dozen signs of it.”
“A dozen? Come on.” No one could give themselves away that thoroughly.
“You knew she was lying. How did you come to that conclusion?”
“’Cause she told a stupid story about a million-dollar treasure and a dead husband come back to life. Doesn’t take an expert to figure out it’s a crock.”
“My hunch is, you read all the body-language signals on a subconscious level—the direction of her feet, the angle of her body, voice inflection, how fast she talked, where she looked, what she did with her hands, nostrils, lips, whether she swallowed a lot—”
“It would take me a year to catalog all that. Isn’t it easier just to listen to what a suspect says?” Yet merely listening to the words someone spoke hadn’t always told him what he needed to know. He’d missed some vital clues during that last operation with Sheila.
Just thinking about Sheila filled him with a profound sadness. “Hey, Claudia, can you tell what I’m thinking now?”
“I read body language, not minds,” she said tartly.
“What’s my body language telling you?”
She actually took him seriously, studying him from head to toe in a slow perusal that made him hot—checking him out the way a woman does at a bar when she wants you to return the favor. If he was as good as he thought he was, though, Claudia would have no idea how badly he’d like to kiss those moist, full lips of hers and muss up that elegant blond hair.
“You’re bored,” she finally said. “You don’t like this assignment, you don’t like Mary-Francis, and you’d rather be working on something else.”
“Uncanny,” he said as relief washed through him. He still had it. He could still hide his true feelings.
“I’m not so ready to wash my hands of Mary-Francis,” Claudia said, abruptly returning to business. “I’m going to talk to Angie. If she’s in contact with her supposedly dead father—”
“Whoa, wait, Claudia. You probably shouldn’t confront her. She could be dangerous.”
Claudia seemed insulted. “I know how to deal with addicts, even violent ones. I’ve had clients come at me with knives, try to choke me with drapery cords—”
“In a clinical situation, where I’m guessing you have a panic button, or people waiting in the next room who’ll come running if you scream.” Jeez, and he thought his job was dangerous.
“I know a little something about dangerous people,” she said. “I wouldn’t be dumb enough to confront her in an unsafe environment.”
“I’ll go with you,” he said, surprised at how happy it made him to have an excuse to spend more time with Claudia. Now that he knew for sure she couldn’t see inside his head as though it was a fishbowl, he wouldn’t be so irritated if he caught her studying him again. In fact, he might not be irritated at all. Did she always wear lacy slips? What was that about?
“I’m sure you have better things—”
“Once Daniel makes up his mind to check out a potential client, he wants it done right. It’s my job to run around interviewing people connected with the case. It’s what I’m being paid to do.”
“I’m on a hefty retainer,” Claudia reminded him.
“Then we’ll confront Angie together,” he said, settling the matter.
* * *
“GOOD MORNING, CELESTE,” Claudia said as she entered the Project Jus
tice lobby the next morning. “I’m here to meet Billy Cantu.”
Celeste Boggs, Project Justice’s office manager and self-proclaimed head of security, looked up from her Soldier of Fortune magazine with a stern expression and pointed to a clipboard. “Sign in there, please.”
“Oh, but I’m not—”
Celeste tapped the clipboard with one impatient finger and glared, daring Claudia to complete her argument.
Claudia signed in. It was hard to defy Celeste. Though the former Houston cop was in her seventies, she was one scary mama who claimed to know fourteen ways to kill someone with her bare hands. Celeste dressed as if she were auditioning for the role of World’s Most Eccentric Senior Citizen, but Claudia wasn’t fooled by the flamboyant red, ostrich-feather-trimmed shirt or the huge earrings made from shotgun shells.
Celeste meant business, and no one got past her into the rest of the building unless she let them.
“Billy,” Celeste said into the phone, “your date is here. I hope you bought a corsage for her.”
Is that how Claudia appeared to Celeste? she wondered with some alarm. Like a high-school girl all primped for a date with the quarterback? She’d opted for a more casual look today, a pale peach linen sundress with a wide brass belt. The skirt was one of her shorter ones…had she subconsciously dressed provocatively for Billy’s sake?
The possibility was troubling.
A loud clanging of metal and a snort coming from the vicinity of Celeste’s feet interrupted Claudia’s uncomfortable musing. “What’s that noise?”
“Oh, that’s just Buster.”
“You have a dog down there?”
“No, not a dog.” Celeste tried and failed to hide a mischievous smile. “Want to see him? He’s a beauty.” She leaned down and grabbed on to something that turned out to be a metal cage. As she hefted it up, Claudia saw that inside the cage was a large, furry, fierce-looking…pig? It was excitedly trying to dig its way through the steel bars with sharp, cloven hooves.
Claudia took an instinctive step back. “Oh, my God, what in the hell is that thing?”
“It’s a javelina! Haven’t you ever seen one before?”
“In a zoo, maybe. What’s it doing here?”
“It was in my backyard, and it kept digging up my vegetables. I caught it. My grandson’s school mascot is a javelina and their previous one died—or maybe they ate it. So I’m donating this one to the school.”
“You’re donating a vicious wild animal to a school?” That did not sound like a wise plan.
“He’s not vicious. I’ve been taming him down. Watch, he’ll let me pet him now.”
“Uh, are you sure that’s a good idea?” Claudia took a few more steps back.
Celeste opened the cage door. “Don’t worry, he’s really rather sweet. Aren’t you, Buster?” Celeste petted the animal on the head, then scratched it behind one ear.
The beast didn’t look as if it enjoyed the attention. In fact, it was frozen in a classic defense posture designed to make it invisible. Its next move would be to bolt for freedom. Freeze, fight or flight.
A frosted glass partition separated the lobby from the rest of the building. Just as Celeste withdrew her hand and was about to close the cage, Billy burst through the glass door like a freight train.
“Good morning, Claudia!”
The wild animal bolted out of the cage at the speed of light, sliding across the polished surface of the reception desk, plopping to the floor and wiggling right past Billy’s feet and through the door before it closed.
Claudia screamed just from the sheer surprise, and Billy backed up against a wall, his right hand automatically reaching under his jacket for a weapon.
“Holy crap, what was that thing?”
Celeste was the only one who didn’t look perturbed. “A javelina, what did it look like?” She calmly picked up the phone and pushed the intercom button. “Attention, all staff. Please be advised there is a small, hairy, piglike animal loose in the building. If you see it, would you mind calling the front desk so I can catch it?”
“You brought a live javelina to work?” Billy asked, as if wanting to be sure he’d heard right.
“It would have been fine if you hadn’t scared it.”
Billy looked at Claudia. “Now would be a good time to leave.”
“Sign out! Both of you.”
Once they were out the door and heading for Claudia’s car, they burst out laughing.
“What the hell was that about?” Billy asked. “Celeste’s new pet?”
“She caught it in her yard,” Claudia said, “and she’s donating it to her grandson’s school because they need a mascot.”
“Her grandson? Celeste doesn’t have any children. She never married. You must mean her great-nephew.”
“She said grandson. I’m sure of it.”
Billy shrugged one muscular shoulder. “She must have misspoken, then.”
Elderly ladies didn’t normally speak of grandchildren they didn’t have. How odd.
As they approached Claudia’s silver-green Nissan Roadster, she used her remote to unlock the doors.
Billy whistled appreciatively. “Sweet ride.”
“Thanks.” She’d insisted on driving for two reasons. First, it gave her something to do with her hands, somewhere to focus her attention besides on Billy so she wouldn’t give away her roiling emotions. And second, she wanted—no, needed—to have control of something. Relinquishing the driving all day long yesterday to Billy had been a tough challenge, particularly since she hadn’t felt she’d had a strong grip on anything else, especially her own feelings.
She glanced over at him as he fastened his seat belt. A lot of men would balk at allowing a woman to drive them anyplace. But Billy was obviously secure enough in his masculinity that it didn’t bother him. Or maybe it bothered him and she wasn’t able to tell.
Why wouldn’t he be secure? Lord, he was handsome in a striped button shirt and a lightweight summer jacket, worn to disguise the fact that he carried a sidearm in a shoulder holster. A crisp pair of boot-cut Levi’s, the ostrich-skin boots to go with them and a white straw Stetson completed the picture.
He took his hat off and settled it on his lap, then donned reflective mirror sunglasses.
One reason cops wore mirrored sunglasses was so they wouldn’t telegraph their actions with their eyes. Was it possible he deliberately hid behind those opaque lenses to make it harder for her to read him? Did he really not want her to know who he was?
She supposed that was only fair. She didn’t exactly go out of her way to broadcast her true self, either. She punched Angie Torres’s address into her GPS, then slid her car smoothly into downtown morning traffic.
Angie Torres lived in a run-down area of Harrisburg Boulevard in Magnolia Park, a hundred-year-old neighborhood of Houston in the early stages of rehabilitation. But this block hadn’t yet been gentrified; the apartment was above a strip of white-brick stores, most of which were boarded up.
Mary-Francis had said her daughter worked in a medical office, leading Claudia to believe she was a functional addict, but this looked to be the sort of place where the near-homeless, prostitutes and other victims of society ended up.
Claudia and Billy climbed a dark staircase into an equally dim hallway, alive with roaches and smelling of urine. Billy placed his body between Claudia and the door as he rang the bell. Though it was a simple display of caveman machismo, it had an undeniable effect on her. His protectiveness made her skin tingle with warmth. Few people in her life had ever put her safety and well-being above their own, even casually.
No one answered. Billy knocked, then pressed his ear against the door and listened.
“I don’t think there’s anyone inside. I don’t hear voices or a TV, not even sounds of a pet. Let’s check around the back. There’s probably a fire escape or something.”
Once outside, Claudia was grateful for a breath of fresh air. She tried to follow Billy on his quest to find a back door, b
ut the tangled, thorny brush behind the small, two-story building proved a bit much for her leather sandals and bare legs, so she waited for him in the shade of a tattered store awning, welcoming the small breather. Being around Billy was a lot of work.
She couldn’t even tell whether he was attracted to her. Normally she could discern in a heartbeat if a man was interested in her, at least on a physical level. The signs were so obvious—the covert studying of her body, the way an interested man leaned in when speaking to her, the length of eye contact, the way his gaze would move from face to breast to legs, then back, and that unique male shifting of weight to accommodate a burgeoning erection.
Billy had flirted with her, but flirting was automatic with him. He’d have probably flirted with Celeste if he hadn’t been so surprised by the javelina. But Claudia absolutely couldn’t tell if anything lurked behind the flirting.
With Billy, she was drowning in a sea of unknowns, confused about where she stood. For the first time in years, the ball of fear in her stomach just wouldn’t go away. Her built-in alarm system was warning her of Danger! in flashing red letters.
Unfortunately, the same thing that made Billy a mystery also made him undeniably exciting. What if he could read her attraction to him? How awful would that be?
She had some control over the physical signals she broadcast to the world, but she couldn’t do anything about the pheromones that were undoubtedly wafting from her body in waves.
As she waited for Billy, a young, skinny Hispanic man covered with tattoos exited from the door that led upstairs.
He noticed her as he walked toward a beat-up truck, and did a double take, this time perusing her up and down, his expression at first hostile, then more curious.
Claudia slid her hand into her pocket where she kept a small device that, with the push of a button, would emit a piercing siren. She never went anywhere without it.
“¿Qué pasa, mama?”
“Hola, señor.” Her Spanish was limited, but she knew enough to have a stilted conversation if necessary. “Do you speak English?”